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Education Department Requires Xinjiang Students to Pick Cotton and Hops

October 26, 2005

The Xinjiang Education Department is requiring nearly 100,000 students to pick cotton and hops in the People's Liberation Army's Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps farms as part of a mandatory work study program, according to a September 12 Urumqi Evening News report.

The Xinjiang Education Department is requiring nearly 100,000 students to pick cotton and hops in the People's Liberation Army's Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps farms as part of a mandatory work study program, according to a September 12 Urumqi Evening News report. In an unusually frank report on popular dissatisfaction with a government program, the Urumqi-based Metropolitan Consumer News published an article on September 15 entitled "How Much Is Amiss in the Work Study Program." The article quoted several parents who had called the newspaper's hotline to complain that schools were forcing young children to work 12 hour shifts in the fields, exceeding the government's two-week maximum limit on how long students may work, cramming students into overcrowded makeshift dormitories, and feeding them poorly and irregularly. (See Radio Free Asia (RFA) for English-language coverage of students' working conditions.)

School officials fine students who fail to meet daily quota for picking cotton and hops. One father of a 10-year-old student called the hotline to report that he had taken leave from work to help his son in the fields, because his son could not pick the daily quota of 15 kilograms of hops. The man reported seeing several parents in the fields helping their children. "Some parents were too busy at work to take leave, so they asked aging grandfathers and grandmothers to work," he reported. Parents also reported that many schools exempted students from the program if they paid 300-400 yuan, raising questions about the government's claimed educational motivation for the program.

An official from the Xinjiang Department of Education's Work Study Program Office responded to several parental concerns in an interview published by the Metropolitan Consumer News on September 19. He emphasized the pedagogical merits of the program, and briefly mentioned the "extremely short supply" of cotton pickers in the region. But he did not address parents' concern about who may be benefiting financially from the mandatory unpaid student labor. The official dismissed allegations that school work quotas were too high, saying that "judging from students' ability to meet similar quotas over the past two years, they should be able to finish the work."